Bengals Beat: Fully ‘Devoted’ Dan Pitcher Ready To Resume His Role In Joe Burrow Offense, Take Care Of Football Better

INDIANAPOLIS — Preparation has been an essential way of life for Dan Pitcher since he hopped on board with with the Bengals in 2016 as an offensive assistant.

In 2019, he became an assistant quarterbacks coach with Zac Taylor’s staff. Pitcher became quarterbacks coach in 2020, coinciding with Joe Burrow’s arrival. When Brian Callahan left to take over as head coach in Tennessee for the 2024 season, Pitcher got the chance to take over as offensive coordinator. After two seasons, Pitcher got the exposure needed to reveal his talents as a master of the Bengals offense.

That exposure led to a pair of interviews right after the season – one for the head coach vacancy in Cleveland and one for the offensive coordinator job in Tampa Bay, where he would actually get to call plays vs. the situation in Cincinnati where he defers to Zac Taylor.

This week, he’s back to being concerned solely about putting Joe Burrow in the best position to make the Bengals offense one of the best in the NFL again.

“It was good. It was informative,” Pitcher said of the two interviews. “I feel like I learned a lot about myself, about the process in general. Obviously I have career ambition. I’ve never been shy about that. And so grateful to get a chance to talk to some organizations. But happy where I’m at. Happy to be the offensive coordinator of the Bengals. I’ve got a really important job here and excited to attack that.”

Pitcher acknowledged what most coaches and coordinators in his position do every year, compile an active resume and portfolio once an opportunity elsewhere arises.

“That’s hard. You try to take some time in the summer just to make sure you have things in order,” Pitcher said. “A lot of it’s about just having discussions with people and making connections that way. So you take a little time there. This is a full time job, being the OC of the Bengals. That’s what I’m devoted to. I try not to really think about or do much else because I’d be doing myself a disservice, the team a disservice, the organization. Because at the end of the day it’s about winning football games. The teams that win and the coaches that win are the coaches that get opportunity. And so that’s where the vast majority of my time is spent.

What were Pitcher’s biggest takeaways from the interview process?

“It’s hard to say,” Pitcher said. “I think what I learned is every organization is different. Everybody’s looking for certain things and those things may change from year to year. Just be yourself. Be as prepared as possible. You’re not going to have the perfect answer to every question. You’re not always going to be exactly what they’re looking for, but you’ve got to be authentic and you’ve got to be prepared. When the time comes and that opportunity does come to fruition for me it’ll be in the right place at the right time for the right reasons.”

Curious from your perspective, how often do you talk to Zac about how much you would like your responsibilities to increase? Have you ever talked to him about taking over play call and responsibilities in full?

“Zac and I have got a great relationship. I trust him. I believe in him. Whatever he asks me to do I’m going to do at a very high level. I’ll keep those discussions that he and I have between he and I, but I’m very comfortable with my role here. I know how important it is. I know that my responsibilities are great and I don’t take them lightly.”

While the Bengals are pretty set at many of the offensive positions for now, there’s always a need to look down the road and build depth through the draft. There’s also the ongoing need to self-scout to improve the efficiency of the offense. And there were two specific areas Pitcher is looking to improve in 2026.

“Two things. Take care of the football and we have to become a more explosive football team on first and second down,” Pitcher began. “That’s the main takeaways. Taking care of the football is always something that there’s a delicate balance there because we always want to approach offensive football from an attacking mindset. If the first thing you talk about in offensive football is don’t turn the ball over, that’s a defensive mindset. What are we going to do to make sure we don’t screw this up? That’s not how we want to play football. We talk about taking care of the football from decision making, processing, technique, all the positive things that you can actually go do and put into action that make sure that we are not putting the team in a bad place. We just weren’t good enough at that this year.”

Indeed, the Bengals tuned the ball over 24 times in 2025, tied with Miami and New Orleans for 27th in the NFL. Super Bowl champion Seattle actually turned it over 30 times but they also had the most fearsome and most punishing defense in the league, not a luxury or eraser the Bengals enjoyed. As a matter of fact the Bengals were minus-3 in turnover margin this past season, the same as the Seahawks, but again, when you don’t possess the Seattle defense, you better play a much cleaner brand of football, a message Pitcher plans to deliver to his offense in 2026.

“To add on top of that, how many of those resulted directly in points for our opponents was a critical error and reason why probably we lost a couple football games,” Pitcher added. “Something that when we regroup with the guys, we’ll make sure we’re focusing on all those positive things that we can act on to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Traditionally, that’s not really an area where we’ve suffered. Then the explosive play thing, we have explosive football players. We’ve really crafted this offense and we play in a way that accomplishes many of the goals that we want to accomplish because we were really good in a lot of areas. That’s one area, given the people we have, and our goal is as a team where we need to get better. We can and we will.”

Another area Pitcher highlighted was the continued priority the offense places on getting the ball in the hands of the top two weapons, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. The two combined for 19 receiving touchdowns, 184 catches and 2,258 receiving yards in 2025. Only Puka Nacua and Davante Adams were better in the NFL this season.

“That’s line 1 when it comes to what we do. How do we put our best players in position to impact a football game,” Pitcher said. “That can change from week to week. I think we have varied Ja’Marr’s utilization over the last two seasons probably more-so than it ever was in his career because you kind of have to. He is going to be a focal point of the defense. You know they are going to have specific focal points in place to limit him. You have to do things to counteract that. We do similar things with Tee, probably not to he same extent in terms of where we align him and how we use him. We want to make sure we are complimenting one another.

“Sometimes that is putting them on opposite sides of the formation, putting them on the same side of the formation because you know you can dictate the coverage and attack it with concepts designed to beat it. There’s a lot of different ways to go about it. At the end of the day its just about two special players and they are the focal point of what we do because we have devoted a lot of resources to those guys but I think we made a smart decision to devote those resources and they can lead us to being the championship football team we want to be.”

Some other key Pitcher takeaways from this week in Indy:

What is the team looking for in a backup QB?

“When you’re looking for a backup quarterback, which is what we’re looking for, you want a great player. The same traits that make a starting quarterback a good player are going to be the traits that make a backup quarterback a good player. But the backup quarterback is a unique job, and an understanding of what that is is important. Because you have to have a guy that’s very intrinsically motivated, somebody that can just go to work and do the work day in and day out because they know it’s the right thing to do, and because they can get themselves to a place mentally where ‘I might have to play at any given moment, but I also may not play all year.’ And that’s different than any other position in the building. Because everybody else usually has some way, shape or form to affect the game. Obviously a backup quarterback is going to play in practice, so they’re going to affect the team that way. So there’s a mentality that goes with that. There’s a maturity that goes with that. And then you balance that against a guy who might have traits that you see being able to develop and grow and maybe at some point become a starting quarterback in this league. Do you go in free agency to try to achieve that goal? Do you go in the draft? Well, you look at all of it. You just decide what’s going to be best for the team based on what type of resources you want to allocate, and you just try to find somebody who fits.”

Would a younger or older player be preferred at backup QB?

“It’s the hardest position in professional sports. If you can maintain your health into your 30s, you’ll have acquired a wealth of experience and knowledge that will make you better prepared to play the position than a 22 or 23 year old who’s entering the league from college football. Depending on the style of offense you run and what you do that experience matters. You still have to be able to do it at a high level. There’s a lot of young players who come to the league ready to play. We had one. He stepped right in and played pretty good right away. It’s a case by case basis based on their background and what they come to us as… The ability to go in in a moments notice and run the offense and for us specifically be able to distribute the football to our receivers is what matters. On top of taking care of the ball and doing the things we’ve already talked about. That’s why Joe Flacco was so effective. We do have so much invested in those guys. The talent to throw the ball to those guys does matter.”

What was learned from the time without Burrow?

“You learn something from every game, every year. You’re right that the vast majority of our efforts are going to be in preparing the team to be led by Joe Burrow, to go win the games to win to get to where we need to go. I think as we look as what we’re gonna do offensively, maybe there’s a couple areas where if you expand a little bit, maybe your offense becomes slightly less dependent on an elite processing pocket quarterback. And maybe slightly more dependent on some things that don’t require that elite skillset. So we’ll so. We’ll see where it goes. We’re gonna use Joe and the unique gifts that he has. We would be stupid not to. That’s what makes us who we are. And then the question becomes how to we amend what we do a little bit here or there to get to the best version of ourselves.”

What about Zac Taylor’s suggestion for a docuseries entitled “Under the Headset” to give fans a better idea of what happens in play-calling and who’s responsible?

“It would sell. He has talked about this. I don’t have much to add it’s a collaborative process. Unless you’re able to experience it which very few people are it’s hard to describe and conceptualize. A lot goes into it. The biggest part is the people who have a say in the process do the work and are prepared. When you have people who do that you should listen to them. We have our way we do it. It’s probably not for everyone. It works for us.”

Could Bengals play more under center on first and second downs to be more explosive in those situations?

“I think that’s part of it. I think when you study the league the teams that are toward the tops of those charts spend a little bit more time under center. That’s something that we have to think about. The one principle I will always adhere to as long as I have influence over the offense is that we are going to do what we believe our players do well. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to push our players. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to expand to areas we think can help us schematically. We are not going to wholesale become something we haven’t been in the past but do we have to maybe push the envelope in some areas that previously might have made us a little uncomfortable. I think those are responsible things you do. You do it the right way, you decide what makes sense for you and your guys and you don’t maybe jump in with two feet but you can stick your toe in the water and see what your results are. Maybe organically it grows from there. It’s a good question and it is something we look at.”

Could Burrow be more dangerous under center or would that take away from what makes him great?

“Yes. That’s the dilemma. Those are the trade-offs. You can go in a million different areas. You guys watch a lot of football. You can see there’s a lot of different ways to play offense. No matter how you choose to play its going to lend itself to some really good things happening and also going to cost you something. That’s our job as coaches to do that math. And constantly take feedback because that math may be different in OTAs versus training camp versus the season based on who we have available based on who we are playing against. That’s the job. But we are very open-minded when it comes to what are things we can do to get better. We look at all of it.

“Joe wants to win. Joe is going to tell you can do anything. He’s not going to tell you he can’t do anything. He’s the ultimate competitor. He’s also a guy that himself watches a lot of football and well researched and cognizant of all the factors that go into play when you are trying to choose how you are going to play offense. My experience with Joe and he and I have been attached at the hip since he walked in the building has been lets do the research, lets put together the evidence, lets make a plan and lets make sure we are all on the same page as to what that plan is and then you are willing to adjust off of it once we learn new things. I just think that is the world he lives in and I wouldn’t want him to live in any other world. That’s the world I live in. We just want to win and figure out how we can contribute to that to the greatest extend possible as an offense.”

How does Pitcher evaluate the Bengals’ efficiency in situational offense?

“Situationally, I’m going to rattle off some things here because I think we are a pretty good situational offense. Two years running we are a top five third down team. Two years running we are a top five red zone team. We are the best in running football team on third and three or less in the league. We are the best running football team in terms of tackles for loss no gain. These are all situations that help decide football games. We are near the top of the league in a lot of them. Four minute specifically obviously you want to be in four minute every game. We were pretty good on four-minute offense in Baltimore on Thursday night. We weren’t a very good four-minute offense Week 1 at Cleveland. What were the factors there? How do those things come to fruition. Four-minute is going to look different depending on who your opponent is and what they allow you to do. Much like a lot of different facets of the game plan that is going to be a week to week thing. We have set out to be a really good situational football team. I think we are one. Doesn’t mean we are perfect. We will try to discover the areas we can grow.”

How good has offensive line become in protecting Burrow?

“Sack-wise, we cut sacks by 25 percent. We were 10th in the league in sack rate, fourth in pressure rate. You look at the back two-thirds of the season those numbers get even better. I think you saw really, really good growth from our young players – Amarius, Dylan. Dalton I thought he played really well for us. Ted is still playing excellent football. Orlando played well. Yeah, we are happy with where we are at there we made some major strides in that area. Doesn’t mean there is not more work to do because there is but really pleased with the culture we have established in that room. The types of guys we have in there. Guys who are coming into their own. Young players we brought here for a reason because we had a vision for them. You are starting to see that vision come to fruition. That’s a big deal. They should feel confidence from that. We should feel confidence from that as an organization as long as we continue to put the work in and make sure we stay in that trajectory.”